Band Website advice (from Oldgit)

[OldGit]

What people have said about this thread:

[font="Verdana"][color="#060606"][size=3]"Simon helped me loads in setting up our website and I started with zero knowledge.

We're [now] pretty close to top if not the top of Google rankings for covers bands in our area and get more business from it than we can handle.

Check out Si's thread first off - I tried to follow it pretty much to the letter and then Si 'audited' it for me.

It's still not perfect but does the job for us. Ours is here.

[url="http://www.burlesquerockband.com/"]http://www.burlesquerockband.com/[/url] "[/size][/color][/font]


[font="Verdana"][color="#060606"][size=3]" www.effective-websites.co.uk (that's me) Brilliant, brilliant people
[url="http://www.bitd.co.uk/index.html"]Back In The Day - Function band[/url]
[/size][/color][/font]



Just wanted to post something here in praise of Oldgit....
He has gone far above and beyond the call of duty with all the help he gave on my band's website. It's gone from "okay" to "pretty good if I do say so myself".
And, most importantly, I'm quite sure all this help has resulted in an increase in bookings for The Panoramics (my band)

He offers top quality advice, no doubt which is worth a pretty penny if I'd been looking for someone's professional services. And have no doubt, Oldgit is definitely a professional when it comes to website usability. He knows his stuff.

I hope this doesn't come across too gushy, but if anyone out there gets a chance to work with or is offered help by Si (Oldgit), bite his hand off.

Just in-case you're interested seeing the site all the work was done on, its this one:

[url="http://www.thepanoramics.com"]www.thepanoramics.com[/url]

Thanks

Jesse




[b]OldGit Band Website Tips and Review - Free![/b]
Posted by: OldGit

In real life I'm a website consultant dealing with marketing using websites and the bits you can see on the screen. That's not the dirty, smelly, long black coat tekkie, coding underbelly of CSS and HTML - though I can spell the acronyms - but the shiny bits that appear on the screen, and how they work with Humans.

I also advise on Search Engine Optimisation.

I've done many a website review and even a couple for people on here and I'm up to do a few more 30 minute whizz-throughs of band and related websites.

Feel free to either PM me your url or post it here and I'll make a few recommendations as to how you can improve things to make it work better for your target website visitors.

This will be from a marketing and Google search perspective so [b]tell me what your website objectives are [/b]eg
Are your website objectives to help you
- build a following
- get wedding and function gigs for 3000 Euro a pop
- play pubs for fun
- impress your mates with that picture of you standing in the rehearsal studio in tatty clothes, and the "ironic and post modern" use of the c word all over the site - even though you are only 14 and want to be taken seriously by agents and venue booking people but hope your mum never looks at the band website (I've seen all of these in the past)
- Find a manager and rekkerd company deal
- Show festival bookers what you can do and what you have done
- Don't have any objectives but every band has to have a website don't they?

-----------

[b]Here's a few things you might like to check first [/b]

- Don't use a Frames site. Google hates them and so does viral marketing - both tools any band should be using to their fullest capability.
- Don't use free space masquerading as a real website (that's where your url says www.yourbandname.co.uk but it's actually located on www.aband.cheapskatespace.co.uk or whatever) Google specifically excludes sites in that situation and will not spider the pages - ie there's nowt you can do to get any of your site (except the url ) visible on Google.
Forget it, shell out the 30 quid a year and get onto real web space from UK2.com or Easily.com or someone.

[b]Search Engine Optimisation [/b]
- Make sure you have good page <title> tags. 55 characters max including spaces, no wasted words like "Welcome to the website of .." and "and" and such like, just meaty key words that say what you do
"Dung Beatles tribute band Brighton Hove rock pop wedd (that's 55 chars) ing party dance.. "
-Make sure you have a description meta tag . These are essential if you are to get good results on Google (and let's face it guys, if your site doesn't show up on Google then you are wasting your time having one)
" The Dung Beatles are an outstanding young Brighton based Beatles Tribute band playing weddings, funerals bah'mitsvas, pubs and prison breaks. John Paul George and Ringo think these guys are the real Ticket to Ride Imagine that She Loves You and has a Revolver" Or whatever. A readable sentence (cos this bit is for humans to read as well as Google robots) but load it with the key words describing your band.
Always make your location obvious, preferably in the header of every page (function and wedding type bands) this crucial piece of information will filter the real gigs from timewasters.
- Make sure you use ALT tags on all images. Add search terms here too (See below)

- [b]MySpace[/b] – (best for bands building a following) Google MySpace customisation and/or templates and check out the options. You are not stuck with the somewhat style compromised layouts and colours they give you. Be inventive, be stylish, be different.

[b]Pictures[/b]
Always have a picture of the band - or the singer - on your Home Page. This single image will get you gigs and a following. People will judge your entire band and everything you do from this image. They will assume you can play Ok but they really do want to see what you look like and they really want to see it on the Home page. Choose your picture well. They will only progress into the website and check out your amazing playing and stage performance if they like the look of that first picture.

If they don't like the look of you they will be off to Google find another band.

So.......
- Only use good pictures. Edit out anything that looks bad.
One good picture is better than 50 rubbish shots of you rehearsing in your mate's front room. Take loads of digital pics and phone pics at gigs and get your mates to as well. Costs nothing and you'll get a few usable ones. Try taking gig pictures with and without the flash. The ones without the flash will look much better. Edit the pictures with Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or a free package. Crop out any crap.

Choose your Home Page picture well ...
Here's a band that bills itself as playing Alt Rock (and other stuff)

No really, they do! Check out their website
[url="http://www.destin-ation.com/band/"]http://www.destin-ation.com/band/[/url]

and so do these guys:

[url="http://www.yearlongdisaster.com/"]http://www.yearlongdisaster.com/[/url]

You see what I mean? The picture tells you a lot.

[b]Images and <Alt text>[/b]
Any image on your site should have < alt text>.
There are [i]three reasons[/i] for this:
1) People do look at sites with the images off. This is especially true of people surfing the web using a phone (it used to say "modem" but no one knows what that is any more )
If you have Alt text they can see it even when they can't see the image.

2) Disabilities Discrimination legislation says your site should make sense to disabled people. In this case it means that people using, say, a screen reader will still be able to use your site. When the reader gets to the image instead of reading out the rather useless "image" it Will read your alt text. Thus the site visitor will know what that image is and if it's relevant or important.

3)Google reads that alt text! and it counts towards your ranking. Cool or what?

If you have no alt text, it just says "image" and that's no use whatsoever.
Google’s going to read it so put some key words in the alt text eg:

“Dan Veall playing his Shuker custom 7 string purple bass at Bootiful's club Norwich with his jazz rock folk band Veall and the Small Calf Cases”

Result? Your key word score increases.
How many images do you have on your site? Not just the pictures of you and your mates but headers, page tiles, bullets, any kind of graphic can have alt text
Don't over do it, though. One or two key words per image (as well as the info text)
It also helps when people do a Google image search - another way into your site.



[b]More Search Engine stuff … [/b]
Once you have done all the stuff mentioned above (go on, back you go and read it all again ..) you should get as many relevant and inbound links into your site as possible.
Links from your mates garden centre site or a forums on heraldry will not enhance your Google status at all. Links from MySpace, gig-guide other bands, agents, etc will. That's inbound links. ie they put a link on their site to yours. Outbound links, ie doing it the other way round (linking to their site from yours) does nothing for your Google ranking and may hurt you once you start getting a good ranking. So, avoid outgoing links if you can.

If you can tell the inbound link's site person how to format the link from their site to yours then you should do:

Ideally you want is an image which is linked to the relevant page on your site. The image should have good, keyword loaded alt text (see below) and next to it there should be a text link that is your band name or url or other key word. Just having "click here" works but isn't nearly as good. So, do that and you get two inbound links and several key words in your favour. Result! Subtle but effective.




[b]A word about Flash;[/b]
Flash is absolutely brilliant. It is also absolutely bruddy awful; it depends on how you use it. It’s a bit like a Flanger…

A little Flash can be really enhance a website - even a splash page. Unlike commercial sites where Flash Splash pages have been a bad idea for at least 10 years, Art sites like band sites can get away with it, sometimes. Always have a Skip Intro function though.

An all-Flash site is only really suitable for a band site where you are not trying to build a following, use viral marketing or depend on Search Engines for people to find you. (because an all Flash site just looks like one single picture to Google, unless you know what you are doing, and that is not good.)

That does not mean it is wrong -

All-Flash sites are brilliant for Agent only sites where the Agent selling your services on your behalf wants something to show the punter. This kind of site does not have to do particularly well on Google as people will be searching for a band name or will know the url.
[url="http://www.e2live.co.uk"]http://www.e2live.co.uk[/url]

Or ... if you have a record contract/management/promotion and someone else is doing your marketing, but then you probably have no say over the website anyway .....

If you are not in these categories, avoid Flash, especially the kind of Flash movie made by a mate in year 7 at school with his first computer .....

If you have a flash site you need to google these two phrases
"flash 99% bad" and Flash 99% good"
and read the results.

Admittedly band sites can frequently ignore the rules needed for commercial sites and claim Art Site immunity to things like functioning browser back buttons, the ability to print stuff off, cut and paste stuff and for content to be visible to google, screen readers etc. but you do need to be careful if you do have a Flash site if you want it to be found on Google.

One of the sites I've reviewed, as part of this service, was a 100% Flash site but it was nice, showy and unchanging. It was for a function band. It worked well in that context where a client or agent would just look through it one or twice and then contact the band for a chat (the primary objective of most function band sites). They had also used the extra things they needed to do for a Flash site to work in Google (use Google to find these things if you need to.. Beyond title and description tags there's content description fields too, I understand, but that's way too techie for me)
It can be done and, in context, Flash is good stuff and great eye candy. Normally, as ever in life, a bit of Flash is a bonus, a lot of Flash can be a drawback.

[b]Some Good Band Sites[/b]
Ok thought I'd pop a few good examples up here as I come across them:

This is E2 - a very professional Agent-only, all-Flash site for a band who’s -base- fee is about £1500
[url="http://www.e2music.com/"]http://www.e2music.com/[/url]

This is Big Tuna, Jaco's band. The site works a treat
[url="http://www.bigtuna.co.uk"]http://www.bigtuna.co.uk[/url]

[b]
Your First Website?[/b]
If you are building one from scratch and you haven't done it before then either just do a Myspace and forget about doing your own - no, seriously a good myspace will work just as well - or Google "website templates" and you'll find load of free ready-made shells you can just copy and use as the basis of your site.
Use one with HTML and external CSS file rather than simple HTML. They come with the good stuff built in already - as a minimum you just have to replace one graphic with another and the text, and copy("save as") that page to make the next one etc. But you end up with something 100 years ahead of what you can build as a beginner 'cos they have been made with nice graphics and good techniques by professionals who are 3000 pages ahead of you in several thick manuals, well some of the time
Some break web conventions though - and that can be a good thing in an "Arts" site like a band one - but you still need to make sure people can get around it OK and find the info you want them to, contact you etc ..


[b]Database driven sites[/b]
If you have a database driven - ASP website - and the url has a ? in it, and you can ask things of the tekkie involved, ask them to “sort it for google”
I am not sure what they do but it involved replacing the ? with something else, or using a clever url re-writing technique but it can be done. Of course if you can get them to do that then the whole site will benefit 'cos, generally, apart from the home page, all the pages will suffer from being invisible to Google.

[b]There's Three types of Google searchers[/b]

Type 1) they know you are there and know you have a website they just left the url in their other suit or use Google ‘cos it's easier.
They search on Dan veall or doodle and find you

Type 2) They've kinda of heard of you a bit, maybe saw you play somewhere and liked what they heard and they hope you have a website cos it's 2am, they are stoned and they want to find out where your gig is tommorow (of course this may well be your drummer )...
They will search on what they know about you: dan veal dan meal dan veel solo bass player purple 7 string bass norfolk norwich the venue name

Type 3) The I Wish person. "Dear Google. I really wish there was a long haired 7 string bass player with a Shuker custom in Norwich that's playing a gig some time soon that I can see. Please make my wish come true ..."
They will search on stuff they want to be true about you 'cos they don't even know you exist (or your band if you are in a band), they just hope and wish you do ... It's a "concept" search

Every site needs to allow for all of these types of searchers. Every site needs to have key terms in its text and tags that all of these people will use.
That's it really. Simple Actually that's also the hardest part of the whole process - defining the key terms to use.

Another Google trick is the "dissatisfied?help us improve" link at the bottom of the results page when you search for something. It leads to a form where you can enter the URL you were looking for so you can go on and enter the URL of your site. (Thanks Alun)








[b]Automatic music[/b]
Apart from MySpace, don't do it, people, unless you want your visitor to be embarrassed at work and instantly close your website. This is especially true of band sites. Sure have music but make it optional. For instance the sofake people made one for Dixie Chicks so I click on that and it too starts automatic music as I get there so now I have the sofake music and the Dixie Chicks music running at the same time ..so what do I do? Well I turn off the speakers or close the browser window with the offending noisy site in it - either action negates the advantages of having the sound on there.
Doh!

Auto music is basically the audio equivalent of a Pop Up.
People prevent pop ups because they are annoying as hell and they will prevent audio pop ups too - by switching off the audio.

That stuff should all be "opt in" so.. have a "play music" button, sell your sound samples well enough for people to choose to play them, don't ram them down people's throats.

It's bad manners and bad marketing.

I nearly always work with some kind of web radio on. If a site starts playing music automatically it's a pain.

[b]Resources[/b]

This is a great CSS resource for those that are interested and has lots of nice designs and I'm sure even all the standards dudes agree which is unusual. (Thanks Stevie Dee)

Zen Garden [url="http://www.csszengarden.com/"]http://www.csszengarden.com/[/url]

Apologies of this has already been posted in this thread(did have a quick look and couldn't see it) but I found this very good for learning CSS... (Thanks Alun)

[url="http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp"]http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp[/url]

They also have good material on most common Web languages, the full index is at [url="http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp"]http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp[/url]

Edited July 1, 2010 by OldGit

[elom]

Good thread that one.

I'm just putting our band's site together at the moment. It still needs more work but please feel free to critique. I thought it looked too amateur but the other guys liked it so it's staying for now. I've tried to incorporate some of the advice from this thread but futher advice is most welcome....

elom

[OldGit]

[quote name='elom' post='1064' date='May 18 2007, 12:43 AM']Good thread that one.

I'm just putting our band's site together at the moment. It still needs more work but please feel free to critique. I thought it looked too amateur but the other guys liked it so it's staying for now. I've tried to incorporate some of the advice from this thread but futher advice is most welcome....

elom[/quote]

PM sent

[bassjamm]

Hi there,

Just a thank you firstly for offering this to us guys, it's very helpful. My dad does something similar to you, but he's not quite as knowledgable in the whole marketing for music and what not areas, so i'll ask you

Firstly, is it possible for you to check out my myspace page [url="http://www.myspace.com/bassjamm"]www.myspace.com/bassjamm[/url]...i'm starting to get more work as a bass player, and i want to turn pro. So i'd like people to find that page if possible, and to get my name about a bit more...can this happen with it being a myspace page?

Secondly, i'm looking to build myself, and my band, some websites. I've very little knowledge of html and all of that gumph, but i am very particular with graphics and what not and a bit picky. As you'll see on my myspace page, i can edit images and stuff and get an image to look ok, but that's not building websites. You mentioned using a ready made template, will i be able to edit a template enough to incorporate editted images etc? Back to the what i want from the sites...for my personal one, it'll be to complement my myspace page in that i want to get more work from it, it to look really slick and cool, and to portray me in a very professional manner. For the band, we're looking to get some serious originals gigs, we want to have a very cool image, and we also want to be found by promoters, agencies, managers, but not party land ones, ones looking to promote good cool original stuff. Does that make sense?

Hope i'm not being too cheaky by asking so much.

Thanks again,

Jamie

[OldGit]

Bit busy, Sorry.

Turning pro means what, exactly? So many variations there that you need to separate it all out and define the threads so you can tune your marketing to hit the people who can make it happen.
Just not working at anything else? paid studio work? writing jungles? on tour with your own band playing death metal originals? Circus band? BBC Jazz Band? WMC 4 days a week and all over the country in a transit (or whatever you young whipper snappers travel in now)

Also
Please do this
do a table.
Left col: Each individual person you think needs to know about you and your skills and abilities to enable you to achieve your goals and objectives.
Middle col, what do they need to know
Col 3 what's the best way to make that information available to them - Website, my space, other. -

You may find that different threads need different web things so you may need several different myspaces - one for each.
And you may find that you don't need a website at all.

Please Pm me when you get this together.
Cheers

PS I guess you and your dad could do this as it's pretty much generic marketing stuff - define objectives, define target market, define how to reach target market, define what to communicate to get them to do what you want them to .. Nothing particularly "music" about it so far


OG,
(up to my armpits in Beauty Consultant marketing as it happens ..
Back, crack and sack, anyone?)

Edited May 20, 2007 by OldGit

[paul h]

let's keep the old website thread alive eh!

i have just done a bit of web design this last couple of weeks and it's made me realise how out of touch i am with it all!

first i had to find a way around microsofts annoying "click to activate this control" thing for a flash navigation bar to work properly. that wasn't around last time i did anything. in the end i dynamically loaded the swf using javascript and it worked a treat.

so then i decided to redo my personal site in the "modern" style. by that i mean by using just divs and css to take care of all the layout. no tables to be found! check it out if you fell like it. definitely the "cleanest" website in terms of code...and probably design i have done. just lacks content at the moment.

no site engine optimization on there at all...but i get all my work through word of mouth anyway.

[url="http://www.paulharckham.com"]www.paulharckham.com[/url]

paul.

Edited June 15, 2007 by paul h

[OldGit]

[quote name='paul h' post='18485' date='Jun 15 2007, 06:37 PM']let's keep the old website thread alive eh!

i have just done a bit of web design this last couple of weeks and it's made me realise how out of touch i am with it all!

first i had to find a way around microsofts annoying "click to activate this control" thing for a flash navigation bar to work properly. that wasn't around last time i did anything. in the end i dynamically loaded the swf using javascript and it worked a treat.

so then i decided to redo my personal site in the "modern" style. by that i mean by using just divs and css to take care of all the layout. no tables to be found! check it out if you fell like it. definitely the "cleanest" website in terms of code...and probably design i have done. just lacks content at the moment.

no site engine optimization on there at all...but i get all my work through word of mouth anyway.

[url="http://www.paulharckham.com"]www.paulharckham.com[/url]

paul.[/quote]

Hiyah Paul
Yeah people do still PM me now and then to take a whiz through their band sites and I'm happy to do that ..

Yours is interesting cos, as you say, it's not really there to be found by concept searchers. You might like to optimse the SEO for people who know you exist, know you have a website and are trying to remember where the hell they left the url though ...

"Now what was that guy's name? The designer guy that did Night Dragon, Paul something Arcam? Hackem? Harkam?"
I'd put all the possible misspellings of your name in an Alt tag on one of your images just in case ..

is this you too?
[url="http://www.paulharckham.com/portfolio/"]http://www.paulharckham.com/portfolio/[/url]


Flash is generally a pants way to display info or navigate for DDA and SEO reasons as the spiders just can't see the contents of flash movies (and they hate javascript too ..) so they just won't get past the Home page unless there a site map or text links to the other bits... Of course you don't have a huge amount of stuff there anyway so it's less of a problem for your site but normal navigation and bits of Flash adding, well, "flash", work "better" and can achieve the same visual effect, more or less ..

Not being found on Google may not be a problem for you but I suspect it could be a problem for the Night Dragon site as there's little accesible stuff for Google to index ... and it hasn't got as far as indexing the "we want investors" page, despite the link.. . This may be because it's new and just not indexed yet or it may be that the spiders got to the home page and found not much to index, no metatags to speak of etc and just went off somewhere else more stocked with search terms ... If it's been up for longer than 6 weeks I'd suggest you look at the SEO ....

Incientally "Click here" is not good text for a link, in general, superflous and not beneficial for google, it also works less well for people using screen readers - imagine tabbing between links and all you get ist "click here" click here" "click here" Better if the links are informative, say "Home page" "contct us" "investment details" or better still "invest in Night Dragon" ..

Anyway I hope this second view of your sites helps ..
OG

[paul h]

always helpful OG..thanks mate.

NightDragon has been up since yesterday...and all the text is as supplied. i gather that they are sending out an investment pack with a link to the website so they are not relying on people finding it via a search engine. but if it becomes an issue i will happily look at the changes you suggest.

as for my site...i love the idea of using the misspellings! top tip. i am always the top of the search engines with the right spelling...but how many people spell it right???

good stuff.

paul.

[OldGit]

[quote name='paul h' post='18614' date='Jun 15 2007, 10:44 PM']always helpful OG..thanks mate.

NightDragon has been up since yesterday...and all the text is as supplied. i gather that they are sending out an investment pack with a link to the website so they are not relying on people finding it via a search engine. but if it becomes an issue i will happily look at the changes you suggest.

as for my site...i love the idea of using the misspellings! top tip. i am always the top of the search engines with the right spelling...but how many people spell it right???

good stuff.

paul.[/quote]

You are welcome .. I'd suggest that from now on you always add a site map to any design, linked from the Home page, and submit it to Google site maps. You don't have to make it a glaring link, something subtle will do the trick. The robots don't know what image you use so a 1x1 pix (with good tuned alt tag of course) will do it if you don't want teh humans to see it.

Yes any ol' SEO company can guarantee to get a site to the top of the search engines results pages, if the search is for something unusual like your name, Dood's name or "hht6789jkim3m3m3m44" assuming that text thread happens to be on the Home page somewhere

Re Night Dragon,
It looks great by the way - the site I mean .. I expect the movie will be good too ..

"I gather that they are sending out an investment pack with a link to the website so they are not relying on people finding it via a search engine."

OK same points, really. i.e. most people that get any info about the film from any source, trade press, a flyer, and especially anything on paper or via good ol' word of mouth, will instantly search for "Night Dragon" in Google and see what comes up. And, as any ecommerce adviser will tell you, these days if you ain't on Google page one - five, you don't exist ..

So I'd have though you really should do as much as possible to make the site work as well as possible on Google given what they have supplied .. I know a lot of web designers have "SEO " as an add on at extra cost but for the 5 minutes it takes to do a decent page title tag, description and (image and Flash movie) Alt tags I'd have though it was an easy bit of "added value" to offer your customers ..

But then if they all did that I'd have a lot less work

[paul h]

by site map you mean a page with links to all the pages on the site? excellent idea.

i do realise i am a bit slack on the SEO front! i should make more of an effort. i will be doing some updates for the NightDragon site when they are a bit further down the line, so i will use that time to do the tweaks you suggest.

i'm just more of a pictures guy....and i tend to let the clever stuff slide a little bit.

i'm pleased you like the ND site mate....it's nice to have a review from someone who really knows theit stuff.

i did expect you to have something to say about the sound fx and animation on the flash banner though!

[OldGit]

Something odd has happened to my view o fthis threads' buttins and controls so here's paste in

"by site map you mean a page with links to all the pages on the site? excellent idea.

i do realise i am a bit slack on the SEO front! i should make more of an effort. i will be doing some updates for the NightDragon site when they are a bit further down the line, so i will use that time to do the tweaks you suggest.

i'm just more of a pictures guy....and i tend to let the clever stuff slide a little bit.

i'm pleased you like the ND site mate....it's nice to have a review from someone who really knows their stuff.

i did expect you to have something to say about the sound fx and animation on the flash banner though! "

-------- reply -----

Yeah Site map is one page with links to all of the pages on the site.
That way when the Google (Yahoo/MSN) spiders get to it they can find all the pages on the site. I am sure you realise that no one knows exactly what Google bots do but the belief is that they are now looking specifically for site maps and favouring new sites that have one. Thus your site gets indexed more often .. Loads about it on the google site.
Also humans are finding site maps to be the fastest way around a site when the navigation is complex or idiosyncratic

PM me when you want to do the SEO on the Night Dragon site and we can talk specifics.

80% of SEO is common sense and easy so a good picture guy with good visual design skills who also builds to include easy SEO as a default (a very rare animal) would score many brownie points with clients and potential clients who look at his portfolio

Re the Night Dragon site - "arts" sites are great 'cos you can basically do what you like, unrestrained by the rules of commerce, competition etc. but you are selling the movie to loads of people - investors are just one group - so it does need to work well in that respect.

Someone looking for info about a specific project like the Night Dragon film will stick with the site and work out the navigation and stuff like that..
It's not like selling a wedding band to a groom where you have to make it easy straight off or they just go BACK one click and google off to the next wedding band in the results list ....

Incidentally you should use the phrase "night dragon" whenever you talk about it in a forum as these forums are indexed by Google and so it will add to the google score for the film, especially if you link to it .... Guerilla SEO in action

Animation and music are fine in their place - I'd expect a film site to have it - in fact a film site without that stuff would be missing an opportunity ..

Flash is great as well. Used sensibly it can really lift the quality of a site, used badly it can make your site invisible to Google and impossible to forward to a mate, thus killing a (following building) band's main marketing methods stone dead - google and viral marketing. However if you sell your band to agents then an all-Flash site works a treat precisly because it doesn't work well in Google ..

Fun eh?

[The Funk]

Could you give our myspace page a follow-up inspection please? Link is in the logo in my signature. Thanks!

[OldGit]

For some reason I can't see the messages on this thread beyond teh first one (the one I copied over from BW)
If you've posted to it you'd better send me a PM if you want me to look at your site.
OG

[OldGit]

Yeeeeeeeeeha PhatAdmin fixed the thread so I can see all of it again Thanks matey
So if I owe you a reply, please accept my apologies , twas Bill Gates demon software playing up and not me ...
OG

[OldGit]

[quote name='The Funk' post='50437' date='Aug 24 2007, 10:54 PM']Could you give our myspace page a follow-up inspection please? Link is in the logo in my signature. Thanks![/quote]


PM sent

[paul h]

this thread was playing up for me too! all better now.

well, i have taken OG's advice to heart and i have changed a couple of my sites. my own site [url="http://www.paulharckham.com"]www.paulharckham.com [/url]is now all on one page, with a nifty sliding scroll script.
talk about search engine friendly, i am getting a lot more relevant traffic from search engines now, which is very cool.

i have dumped the flash from [url="http://www.nightdragon.co.uk"]www.nightdragon.co.uk[/url] and gone for text links, i haven't really done anything else to help that one yet. i haven't got access to site stats so it's hard to tell what's happening traffic wise.

i have also just taken over this one [url="http://www.eotpfilmfestival.com"]www.eotpfilmfestival.com[/url] which is completely dead as far as search engines are concerned. i am pretty sure that it's the php "include" statement for the header and a lot of the content that's killing that one. so i am going to add a site map when i do the next update.

so a big thanks to OG, i am almost enjoying this SEO lark.








i said almost.

Edited September 6, 2007 by paul h

[OldGit]

[quote name='paul h' post='56304' date='Sep 6 2007, 01:00 AM']this thread was playing up for me too! all better now.

well, i have taken OG's advice to heart and i have changed a couple of my sites. my own site [url="http://www.paulharckham.com"]www.paulharckham.com [/url]is now all on one page, with a nifty sliding scroll script.
talk about search engine friendly, i am getting a lot more relevant traffic from search engines now, which is very cool.

i have dumped the flash from [url="http://www.nightdragon.co.uk"]www.nightdragon.co.uk[/url] and gone for text links, i haven't really done anything else to help that one yet. i haven't got access to site stats so it's hard to tell what's happening traffic wise.

i have also just taken over this one [url="http://www.eotpfilmfestival.com"]www.eotpfilmfestival.com[/url] which is completely dead as far as search engines are concerned. i am pretty sure that it's the php "include" statement for the header and a lot of the content that's killing that one. so i am going to add a site map when i do the next update.

so a big thanks to OG, i am almost enjoying this SEO lark.
i said almost.

[/quote]

You are welcome. I'm glad it helped.

With the EOTP you might consider putting your geographical location into the <title> tags .. Just to make it bleedin' obvious it's not Cannes, San Francisco or Brooklyn ... (It's in Bognor, if anyone was wondering)

Meanwhile check to see if you have a long leather coat and engineer boots on and think Matrix is the best film ever ... You me be turing seriously webbie ...

Edited September 6, 2007 by OldGit

[The Funk]

Glad to see the thread is repaired.

PM received with thanks!

[paul h]

ahhhh Mr. OG!!

more techy questions...so i guess i will have to order that long coat from somewhere!

what secrets can you divulge regarding SEO and ajax? i want to use ajax for the next incarnation of the nightdragon site. the new site will feature the first proper trailer and i want to use ajax to load the different content pages without interrupting the streaming video.

imagine a typical apple dot com trailer site, but which slides down to the content without stopping the video.

i have a bit of code set up which works well, including my favourite nifty smooth scrollin js. i have pm'd you the test page, i won't post it here because i don't want a WIP to be indexed anywhere!

i imagine a site map is the way to go, but then i will most likely get that old frame problem of pages being viewed out of context as it were.

eagerly awaiting your wisdomy pearls.



paul.

[OldGit]

[quote name='paul h' post='59888' date='Sep 13 2007, 02:15 PM']ahhhh Mr. OG!!

more techy questions...so i guess i will have to order that long coat from somewhere!

what secrets can you divulge regarding SEO and ajax? i want to use ajax for the next incarnation of the nightdragon site. the new site will feature the first proper trailer and i want to use ajax to load the different content pages without interrupting the streaming video.

imagine a typical apple dot com trailer site, but which slides down to the content without stopping the video.

i have a bit of code set up which works well, including my favourite nifty smooth scrollin js. i have pm'd you the test page, i won't post it here because i don't want a WIP to be indexed anywhere!

i imagine a site map is the way to go, but then i will most likely get that old frame problem of pages being viewed out of context as it were.

eagerly awaiting your wisdomy pearls.



paul.[/quote]

Bit too techy for me so I'll duck this and point you at here for some techy answers including using mod-rewrite etc...
[url="http://blog.tn38.net/archives/2005/12/ajax_and_seo.html"]http://blog.tn38.net/archives/2005/12/ajax_and_seo.html[/url]

OK?
OG

[paul h]

[quote name='OldGit' post='59912' date='Sep 13 2007, 03:09 PM']Bit too techy for me so I'll duck this and point you at here for some techy answers including using mod-rewrite etc...
[url="http://blog.tn38.net/archives/2005/12/ajax_and_seo.html"]http://blog.tn38.net/archives/2005/12/ajax_and_seo.html[/url]

OK?
OG[/quote]

Best. Link. Ever.

cheers again OG!

[OldGit]

[quote name='paul h' post='59955' date='Sep 13 2007, 04:33 PM']Best. Link. Ever.

cheers again OG![/quote]

Give man a fish and you feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish and you suddenly become disposable ...

[paul h]

i just want say that since i have subscribed to OGs SEO techniques my website traffic is looking a lot more healthy.

my site is selling my design skills (skills?) and these are just some of the search terms that have found me over the last few days....

digital animated poster
dirty bass graphic designer
graphic poster website
myspace font tutor
vibe.to graphics
films poster emails
web design composer
illistrative look in photoshop
music poster graphic design
player sking design photoshop
90's graphic design
movie posters in photoshop
designing music show poster
business cards with that 70's show style font

so that to me, seems pretty much on the money!

how many of those visitors i tune into customers is another matter!

cheers OG!

paul.

[OldGit]

[quote name='paul h' post='97507' date='Dec 2 2007, 09:33 AM']my site is selling my design skills (skills?) and these are just some of the search terms that have found me over the last few days....

dirty bass graphic designer[/quote]

? is your bass particularly dirty? Was that your mum looking for your email address?
I'm constantly surprised at what people put into google to find sites ...

Glad it's working for you Paul.
Si

Edited January 11, 2008 by OldGit

[Thunderthumbs]

Been passing message back and forth with Si the past few days, and he's given me invaluable advice on redesigning my website, and some great marketing ideas too.

Thanks for all your help Si. Am I to pay you commission when we get that "big" gig?

If you want great advice, don't hesitate to ask him, you won't regret it.